I agree with you there are multiple interpretations, but there’s an important distinction.

For me personally or likely for other experienced engineers, code compactness is a nice thing.

But this is unimportant, because nobody should be writing the code for me or with me in mind. Code compactness for the sake of other experienced engineers is an extremely stupid thing to prioritize above the simplicity of reading straightforward, separated operations that rely on as few concepts as possible.

Code compactness is nowhere near as important as concept compactness, because the latter appeals to all engineers, not merely to other experienced ones.

Anything that requires or introduces a new concept or mixes multiple concepts together is more costly in terms of hurting readability and maintainability than corresponding “longer” code that relies on fewer concepts.